


Living Art

by The_Exile



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alcohol, F/F, Human Sacrifice, Lima Syndrome, Sensation Play, Snakes, Stockholm Syndrome, Surprise Kissing, Taunting, implied social stigma about disabilities, petrification
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-29
Updated: 2017-07-29
Packaged: 2018-12-08 14:12:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11648202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Exile/pseuds/The_Exile
Summary: Immortal but lifeless, her garden needed something more.





	Living Art

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nonx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonx/gifts).



"It's just proper to have at least something alive in a garden, don't you agree?"

The sibilant whisper in her ear was accompanied by the lightest flick of a delicate serpentine tongue. That sensation still brought a shiver down her spine, even though she knew to expect it by now. She could still hear the slow slithering of the creature's bulk across the smooth stone tiles of the subterranean labyrinth's floors, normally a subtle sound except when it echoed across a vast chamber with no other sounds except the constant dripping of water from somewhere far above her, the occasional hideous scraping as her captor moved a statue that she had decided wasn't in the exact most aesthetically pleasing spot possible in her grim, eternally frozen garden. The creature stank, too, although she masked it with clouds of rare and expensive perfume. Mostly she stank of the rotten corpses of the prey she devoured or the grave-dust-like debris of those unfortunate victims of her sporadic temper tantrums. Sometimes her captive could also smell something else underneath the layers of gaudily concealed death, an animal musk that made her feel dizzy.

"You are the only one I allow in here, you know. The Gorgons have been made to learn the consequences of intruding upon a lady's private chambers," continued the snake-woman, circling her as if planning to wind the coils of her body around the woman and strangle the life out of her. She could tell from the way that the sound was behind her, then suddenly to the side and then in front, that her captor was pacing, somehow incensed to move faster than her usual languor, "There are things I can do to those who do not fall to my gaze. Oh, do not worry, that was not a threat directed at you," her laughter was thick and sultry as her prize swallowed a breath, shaking despite her efforts to retain her calm in such a delicate situation, "I would never harm you, my... project, let's say. No, my challenge. For so long, the beauty in my realm has felt... artificial. Cheating, you could say. To immortalise something, to free it from the jaws of change, is to capture it in its most perfect moment, but it is never the same as living, flowing beauty that can grow beyond its own limits. Surely, as a fellow artist, you can understand this, hm?"

"You know of my life before..." she swallowed.

"Before you were chosen as a sacrifice to appease me? My dearest, I picked you out especially. Do you think they would be stupid enough to send someone to me who cannot be as easily subdued? To risk the chance that I might interpret it as a threat, as deliberate sabotage?"

"I... I assumed it was because they hated someone as flawed as me," she bowed her head, "I suppose I was not thinking." 

"That makes sense, I suppose. The race I once belonged to, they are so afraid of those who are different," her breath was hot against the woman's neck.

"What are you going to do to me?" she asked, her voice trembling a little. It was a question she had asked many times before, all to no avail. 

Every day since her capture, she was presented, usually in maddening silence, with a plate of food and a drink (usually perfectly good fare and well enough to sustain her), inspected for a while, then left alone in the garden of what she hoped were preserved corpses. Sometimes, when she had been alone for a while, she fancied that she could hear the last echoes of their screams that had been cut off mid-flow as their body instantly solidified into lifeless stone. She could feel their unblinking eyes boring into her soul, their accusing hands grasping for her, demanding to know why she alone had not joined them. Except for the times when she had guests, when she locked her captive in a giant birdcage, the Medusa generally allowed her free rein of the vast gardens, and had even led her by the hand on a perverse guided tour of her favourite conquests, explaining their history. Quite a lot of the garden wasn't humans - in fact, it was mostly genuine, perfectly preserved petrified flowers, vast rose bushes with fragile but immortal blossoms. She had even discovered that the dripping was coming from the oldest statues that had been converted to morbid but clever water features surrounded by a fountain. There were birds in normal sized cages, a lot of lizards and some things she didn't think were naturally occurring animals but misbegotten, cursed things like the Medusa herself.

"I do not know, to be honest. I have not been in the land of the humans for so long. How does one bring out the true beauty of a living human? Ah, yes, I remember," the woman flinched as a hand caressed her shoulder, sharp-clawed and scaled but slender and graceful, surprisingly small, and another hand brought an object in close to her. A glass of wine, she recognised from touch and smell. Strong, heady wine, an older vintage of red that was already making her feel a little light-headed. She carefully grasped the delicate crystal decanter and brought it tentatively to her lips, sniffing it, "There's nothing in it except wine, dearest. Although I can no longer abide the stuff. Drink, I insist! Don't make me look like a bad host!"

"Wh... what is this about?" she demanded.

"To bring you to life, what else? To make you feel more human in this accursed place," she hissed, her snakes close to the woman's face now, fascinated and repulsed by the smell of the wine as her captor was by her, "There's only so much I can do, my body being what it is, but one learns patience and persistence when one's art involves stone."

The woman blushed. The snakes were so close now, running their tongues over her eyes, that she could just tell the depth and thickness of the shadows from their surroundings. 

Blind from birth, her wild imaginings had always been filled with plenty of the other senses, and now those vibrant sensations shifted from nauseating dread of a thousand and one imagined fates, each worse than the other, to something that provoked a far different reaction in her body, one that she couldn't hide as smooth lips met hers.


End file.
